Saturday, August 22, 2015

Teaching in Dardja before colonial rule

In a recent article on RFI, I'm quoted as saying that Darja (Algerian dialectal Arabic) was already used in education before the colonial period. Here's why I said so.

If you talk to anyone who studied at a Qur'ānic school before independence, you'll find they learned their letters by reciting a little ditty in Darja that goes ألف ما ينقط شي، البا نقطة من تحت، التا زوج من فوق... etc. (Alif ma yənqəṭ ši, əlba nŭqṭa mən təħt, ətta zuj mən fuq..., ie: "Alif is not dotted, ba has a dot underneath, ta has two on top...") The same ditty existed in Kabyle: alif u yneqqeḍ ara, ba yiweṯ s wadda, ta snaṯ ufella... . My own aunt learned her letters that way before independence - in a school affiliated with the Association of Muslim Ulama, who today are pressing for a school boycott if dialect is officially introduced as a means of primary instruction... Well, it turns out that this exact ditty is already attested in Franciscus de Dombay's Grammatica linguae mauro-arabicae, a study of the Arabic dialect of northern Morocco published in Vienna in 1800, thirty years before the occupation of Algiers, when European power in North Africa was limited to a handful of ports:

Standard Arabic was, of course, by far the most important language to learn. But it turns out that at least one other language was taught using Darja: Kabyle Berber! In Des noms et des lieux, Mostefa Lacheraf notes:

The merits of teaching in Darja are open to debate, as are the motivations of Benghabrit. But to go into a sudden moral panic over Benghabrit's proposal, you need to ignore not only current but also historical practice among Algerian teachers. Anyone who really thinks Darja should be banned from the classroom should push to have that actually happen, not wait until someone admits to it to start protesting - and should acknowledge that doing that would in fact be something new.

Back to here and now. Why isn't anybody talking about teaching subjects like math and history (and not languages only) in Berber for Berber-speaking kids, in Kabylia, Algiers and Awras regions? This doesn't require any extensive training. The teacher can use the local Berber dialect automatically. A lot of misery in learning math and history and languages can be avoided using the mother tongue.

I think if there is mother tongue-aided education for Berber-speaking kids, it will be an eye-opener for many Algerians who oppose Darija.

Maybe with Berber, this thing will not be met with such hysteria. The Berber cultural and political movements certainly would welcome it immediately.

You may find it hard to believe, but I've actually spoken with Kabyle teachers who thought mother tongue education was a great idea - _except_ for maths and sciences, which should naturally be taught in French. Talk about missing the point. Then again, Tizi Ouzou consistently tops the league tables for Bac results in Algeria as it is, so not sure how much people would notice if the situation got even better... Still, it's a good idea in principle.

Here it is, the letters have some pretty exotic abbreviated names in the Tashelhiyt poem. I've taken this from Nico van den Boogert (1997) The Berber Literary Tradition of the Sous. Leiden: NINO. pg. 31.